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Definition of Baconian in US English:

Baconian

adjective

1Relating to Sir Francis Bacon or his inductive method of reasoning and philosophy.

‘By the end of the nineteenth century, Baconian methodology, with its perceived emphasis on ‘fact collecting’ rather than imagination, was viewed as a faulty approach to scientific inquiry.’

‘The other is the Baconian view that knowledge-seeking is always answerable to some set of independently specifiable practical goals, such as the advancement of material welfare.’

‘The Review was strongly influenced by the Baconian philosophy throughout the pre-Civil War period.’

‘The conquest of nature for the relief of man's estate is the Baconian motto; it is the banner under which modern medical science marches.’

‘A deeper reflection on this verse and other verses of similar import will go a long way toward warding off a Baconian infiltration of Islamic philosophy and science through the back door.’

‘It arises, I think, out of the long-discredited Baconian view of the scientist as disinterested seeker of truth who gathers facts with mind cleansed of prejudices and preconceptions.’

‘The navigators of our time have also given us new globes, including the great globe of Jupiter, but we shall see how, in doing so, they opened up new vistas for the Baconian dream of harnessing science to the service of people.’

‘These name changes are quite revealing, for they show a progression from merely surveying nature, to one of active investigation of nature along Baconian lines, and finally to a sort of scientific holism.’

‘The East never suffered the Cartesian schism between mind and body that scarred our paradigm, the Baconian separation of observer and subject that is only now being redressed as quantum physics prove the mystics right.’

‘The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants.’

‘An immanent critique of Baconian science and Cartesian rationality, the book begins by noting, following two World Wars and a stupendous genocide, that ‘Enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant’.’

‘Britons in the 1790s saw Baconian science as safe; the French philosophers had been led into dangerous speculation, and had brought atheism and revolution upon their country.’

‘Expressing the optimism of Baconian science and hoping to record all the wonders of the natural universe, seventeenth-century elite gentlemen formed academic and philosophical societies to discuss nature's oddities.’

‘If this happens, science will be purely instrumentalist, manipulative and exploitative in the Baconian sense.’

‘The fact that no other science exists in the contemporary world but the one built upon the Baconian model - now wedded to the state and the corporation - is generally used as a rationale for the claim that no other science is actually possible.’

‘Naturalists who collect and classify living species or astronomers who map the stars in the sky are examples of Baconian scientists.’

‘Hume's analysis has been interpreted as reinforcing Baconian inductivism, a tradition that perhaps owes as much to Hume's epistemological investigations as to the counsel of Francis Bacon himself.’

‘In so doing, it quietly confronts the Baconian understanding of technology as ‘the effecting of all things possible.’’

‘Now the Baconian conception of technology as instrumentum has been overtaken by ‘autonomous technology’ since technology has now become end itself rather than means as ends are subverted by means.’

‘He contrasts the Baconian amateurs - focused on systematic exploration and minute observation - with the Cartesian professionals - always with their eye on the grand theory and the cosmic problem.’

1.1Relating to or denoting the theory that Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.

‘He also took part in the Baconian controversy, arguing in favour of Shakespearian authorship, in Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown.’

‘If the Baconian theory is a myth and not worthy of serious attention why did he get so excited about it?’

‘Such external circumstances at the basis of the Baconian theory assume that Shakespeare was not educated enough to have written the works attributed to him.’

‘Its content ranged from debate over textual cruces to the latest developments in Baconian theory, and it took a particular interest in Shakespeare clubs.’

‘The librarian wrote me, very liberally asking me to send to the Library anything I had written in favor of the Baconian theory, saying that the management wished to give house-room to anything related to the subject (fact is, those fellows over there are beginning to feel the force of the Baconian claim).’

noun

1An adherent of Bacon's philosophical system.

‘Though truth is not self-revealing (as Cartesians and Baconians thought), though certainty may be unattainable, the human situation with respect to knowledge is far from desperate.’

‘Newton, who is usually contrasted with Bacon, said he was a Baconian and his own logic machine, the Calculus, was produced through a Baconian eliminative process.’

‘I think my favourite bit is when he travels into the future, or anyway a future, only to be sentenced to death when he lets slip that he's a Baconian, or maybe I mean Oxfordian.’

‘The name has often been canvassed, especially by Baconians.’

‘But Newton said he was a Baconian.’

1.1A supporter of the theory that Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.